Kids

How to deal with the sad part of the movie and a sobbing toddler...

Recently we went to see Home, a new animation film about a friendly alien called Oh and his new friend Lip, a human looking for her mum. Rocky has only been to the cinema a few times and both times were a disaster. He doesn't do sitting still, especially for long periods of time. He has grown up a bit recently so I took this fidgety toddler along with his cinema loving brother along to cinema to see the only thing I thought he'd like. I was feeling brave. I was feeling like a great mum after weeks of promising and ducking out at the last minute... I was feeling confident.

There were only a few seats left as it was the start of the school holidays, so we ended up right against the wall with 20 other people to the right of us, right in the way of us getting out, the pressure was building.

It began and he actually sat through it. I was on guard, just waiting for the moment when he decided he would use all his energy up at once by fighting with me about sitting down and not smacking the person in front with his toy cat or needing the toilet every 2 minutes, just because he can... but he sat still...

Well, he sat still until right at the end when the Alien got crushed under the big bad meany man's spaceship.

With pure horror in his face he burst into tears and even when they lifted the spaceship to find him fine and dandy, he was too distraught to get over what had just happened to the little laughing alien called Oh.

So what did I do?

I laughed a little out of pure shock, then cuddled him a lot, said shhhhh a lot and then panicked and almost cried myself because I felt like I was one of those mums I hate who don't take their noisy kids out and ruin the films for everyone, but it was right at the end and there were so many people to get passed... So then I just panicked a bit more because he wouldn't stop and definitely looked like one of those cotton wool mums to all surrounding me so I thought I'd turn myself into one and I said 'Let's go and buy some Lego...'... silence. Phewww.

What on earth do you do in those situations? It was my first one, I'm not used to this stuff, Kyd has a heart of stone and gets upset by these things very rarely, actually never, so I wasn't prepared for such emotional distress over an animated kids film with a PG rating! It was traumatic, I needed a lie down.

OK, OK, so I hate me too for dealing with it with bribery but it worked and it took his mind off it... and I didn't feel as guilty.

So how do you deal with the sad part of a movie and a sobbing toddler?...

You don't, you buckle and become everything you hate about modern parenting but it's OK because the kid thinks you're awesome and the guilt fades eventually, don't worry.